Virtualisation Technology Skills in Highest Demand

Virtualisation technology skills are currently the most sought after IT skills by Scottish companies, according to research published this month by leading recruitment agency Eden Scott.

The firm asked IT professionals from a range of companies in different sectors which technologies will have most impact on the jobs market and where skills will be most required. According to respondents, the technologies that will be most sought after in the next 12 months are:

Virtualisation;

.NET;

Mobile Development;

Cloud Computing;

SharePoint.

Pearse Kelly, Senior Consultant – IT with Eden Scott, commented: “The cost saving benefits of Virtualisation technologies, such as VMware, is likely to be the one of the main reasons for this continued increase in demand, particularly during the current economic climate.

Also the increased processing ability and bandwidth of mobile devices has led to a rise in demand for mobile site and app development and this will be a key growth area going forward.”

Respondents also indicated that Development, Business Intelligence, and Business Analysis positions are the hardest to fill currently.

Pearse added: “Development skills and in particular .NET will continue to be in demand over the next year. This has the effect of producing a very candidate driven market, and if this trend continues it could have a dramatic effect on the availability of candidates in this area. In turn, this may lead to an increase in the requirement for contract resource.”

Meanwhile, respondents said that .NET, Oracle, and SharePoint are the hardest development languages to fill at the moment.

Pearse said: “Languages such as C# with ASP.net constitute the vast bulk of our development requirements. The continued popularity of the .NET development platform has resulted in a shortage of talent in this area. At Eden Scott, we are constantly striving to seek new seams of quality candidates to feed this demand.”

Polly Purvis, Executive Director of ScotlandIS, commented: “It’s really valuable to have this up-to-the-minute market analysis at a time when skills are in high demand.”